A new journey into the unknown. A hijrah. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. SubhanAllah.

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Sunday, September 11, 2005

Selambakodok chillin' on a lily pad with his kodok family, watching a slow moving stream. Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh....

Unbeknownst (what a gila glamer word) to the world, selambakodok has been chillin' with his kodok family and bonda kodok in cyberjaya for the past couple of days to vegg. I decided i needed to get away and spend time with my family so that we could bring back the balance to our lives.You see i am a workaholic. I am sure many of you are the same out there and the reasons that you are, for the better part, is mainly known by you. As for Me, it is partly due to conditioning from when i use to study architecture, BUT mainly i guess it is due to the fear that, if i don't work, my family will not be fed.You might think it insane for a person in my position to feel this way, but there you go.

Early in my life, i decided to play a BIG game. To take big risks in my life.

BIG RISKS = BIG GAIN / BIG FAILURES.

Not to be afraid to be Ridiculed / Maki-ed / Laughed at / Passed over etc. in trying to succeed in my life. In trying to become Afdlin Shauki. (So, although i am new to the blogging game, i am not new to people talking s**t about me. Don't get me wrong, the whole point of the last blog is that i would just like people to develop a culture of owning up to what they do if they so believe in what they say.)

Anyway, I was not ok with the life i had. That means i had decided that i didn't want to be poor all my life. I didn't want to see my mom stuck in that hole in the wall called the DBKL Sri Sabah Flats, forever. I want to give my children what i never had as a child. To many of you, i guess this story will sound all too familiar to yours as well.

So i menebalkan muka setebal tembok china dan menyondol sahaja seperti khinzir hutan yang terbau darah ke mana ada peluang / opportunities that was open to share what i had. What did i have?

The gift from god to somehow entertain some people. BUT this gift had to be polished, disciplined, trained, honed through education and mainly thru FAILURES.

I am who i am today because i have failed many times. The difference is to a lot of other people is i never considered myself a failure but a student of failures. Which is after for 2 suddenly i got good at my MATHS / ILMU HISAB because i realised the more i failed, but then tried again and again and again to get it right, the closer i got to understanding how to get to the answer.

I don't really remember all th sine and kosine and tangents anymore because it's true what a lot of people say , we don't use it in our daily life, but what i really learned thru maths was that getting the correct answer was just a bonus, the process of getting the answer was more important. So that meant not giving up if u fail to get the answer, it was merely the beginning of the challenge. So you keep plugging away. again and again and again..

So, from "apa nama budak gemuk yg. datang audition tu?"... it became, " Mr. Shauki, we would like to offer you the role of the interpreter in our film Anna and The King, where you will be playing opposite Miss Jodie Foster and Mr. Chow Yuen Fatt (or as he would say," Juust cor me FATT!")

At this point in time, you might be asking yourself , yes..yes... but what has all this got to do with the price of crude oil or apa kena mengena dengan mukadimah mamat ni tadi?

Well that is why i became a workaholic, because i am working for the bonus. And the bonus is to be able to give all my familya great life. Help people who are talented but have no LOBANGS / connections, achieve their goals. Teach people what i know. Share my knowledge with others.

BUT....

SOMETIMES we have to give ourselves a TIME-OUT, so that in chasing our future we don't leave and forget the people in our present. I have gone down this road once and my family nearly fell apart.

So here i am at a hotel room with 2mb internet connection in cyberjaya, sharing my thoughts with you... while my family lay soundly asleep after two days of goofing around with each other, in our two chalets that i have taken for the weekend.

Before i sign off i found this gem of a story in my GMAIL and when i read it, i got like a japanese anime character and water started to well up at the bottom of my glassy eyes and started to vibrate furiously before slowly running down my cheek. It is something i think we can all learn from. Thank you Mohd. Khairul Alias, from Johore Baru for this.

Yeah! I agree wif u. Keluarga yang paling penting especially our own children. Seriously I can't live without my kids...my precious kids. When I'm out, I dunnoe how many times I will call home to check on them eventho I know they r in great hand. *Thumbs up*

An unusual and touching post, from Afdlin the Father, not Afdlin the Entertainer…the same feeling I get, looking at the two men in my life, after a hard day’s work (and play !). Underneath all the glitters and stuff, you are still that dedicated father, working vv hard for his family. You go, dude !

Anyway, I know about that father and son story. But it was a great refresher. Made you think about two things:

- You need to spend time with your family (including your parents - i have a 6-month old BTW)- and made you start to calculate how much you are worth on per hour rate (kira, jangan tak kira).

OKlah, this is my first comment after discovering your blog last week. My colleague was curi tulang (like how I am now) reading your blog.

I have to say this ...

FUUYOOOO ... !! Afdlin Shauki is blogging!! But not only that ...

- Your fans love you. It's impressive you get >50 comments on each post- You successfully sold >2000 copies on your album through this free website- If you are a politician, you seems to be with the 'rakyat' a lot, and so close too

I want to say this la bro - what ever you are doing now, keep it up. Memang respect tahap DEWA2 ni. Lagi satu, mind enabling that atom.xml link so I can read your blog using my RSS reader.

been reading ur blog.. i used to read other ppl blog but i never read something that talked abt life... except for yasmin ahmad's.

what i found is even tho u r an entertainer but u have much to worry about ppl, the universe, kodok2 & etc. i think tht's y u r a good entertainer. coz u care. what matter most, u not just care for the ppl, but u want them to improve and learn to be a better person...

Dear Afdlin,This was a really touchy story.I really am happy to have found your blog. It gives me all sorts of emotions that I should feel as a human. Make me realize there's more to it out there than my own life...

I agree, family is the best of everything... and I agree that the only being that will never leave you, is Allah... He will help you no matter how far you have gone astray.

Sometimes its funny when people blame Allah for all the mishaps that happened.. saying that Allah has abandoned them.. but in reality, He never did...

Through experience, I found happiness and balance when i realize that I was the one who had abandoned Him and my family. After all, I was just a teen back then...

Not to say that I fully comprehend what other people's experiance.. but just to share a bit of my own...

I was left to be sick... with only God and my parents around. Those who I thought was going to be my companion left me at the sight of my illness. I thank God that He gave me such insight and gave me the eyes to see and reason things out with myself.

afdlin..your wife is sooo BEAUTIFUL..even with simple clothes..and your kids are comel too..rasa mcm nak picit2 pipi diorang haha..but then again...thank you for the beautiful story..yeah family is the top priority...keep up the good work..

that is indeed a beautiful story. more than that, isn't it astounding what goes around in the minds of our little ones? my previous studies on children's behaviour actually supports that. children watch and imitate and make very witty deductions out of what they see. what's regrettable is how much adults or, specifically, parents, overlook that, and the fact that their children reflect the wisest and the most sensitive side of them that some of them still have and many of them have oppressed out of being adults.

there's a saying that goes something like, the children is the parents of their parents. they make us see and acknowledge things that we tend to take for granted.

thanks for sharing such a brilliant reminder. and beautiful daughter u have there :).